Arthur Concello’s act made circus history when his wife Antoinette joined him in performing the triple somersault in the late ’30s at Madison Square Garden, New York, the two performers both attaining the triple to display the highest peak of team flying ever witnessed at that time.

From Greg Constantine’s book, Vincent Van Gogh Visits New York. See the rest of the drawings on Michael Sporn’s Splog: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

As the seventeen-year-old Karl Rossmann, who had been sent to America by his unfortunate parents because a maid had seduced him and had a child by him, sailed slowly into New York harbour, he suddenly saw the Statue of Liberty, which had already been in view for some time, as though in an intenser sunlight. The sword in her hand seemed only just to have been raised aloft, and the-unchained winds blew about her form. ‘So high,’ he said to himself, and quite forgetting to disembark, he found himself gradually pushed up against the railing by the massing throng of porters.

The opening of Franz Kafka’s Amerika. The illustration is from Kafka for Beginners by David Zane Mairowitz and Robert Crumb.

Filming New York in LA: Sam Fuller talks through the opening scenes of his film, Pickup on South Street. Also a treasure worth finding is a little book of photos with words by Mr Fuller, New York in the 1930s.

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, The Message, from a selection of New York songs posted by Kenan Malik to mark the day today.